But here's the thing - it's not pushing anyone. It's failing miserably because of those differences in game styles.
The player bases are almost always mutually exclusive. That's why I said there's very little overlap between IRL and digital players.
It's because of the MD's status quo in the TCG player base they're not even thinking about playing MD in the first place. Most players see it as a fun little one off thing they could play and that's it. New players, those that do come in, just use DB most of the time to learn TCG/OCG.
MD quickly becomes irrelevant as soon as you actually start playing physically because most of the times those players don't get to play the same decks and games IRL anyway.
If anything, since TCG and OCG bring in more money, wouldn't it be smarter to lure some of those players back into MD as well? Y'know, advertise and market the games better to each other's player bases?
It feels like a no brainer to me to market Speed Duels and Rush Duels to Duel Links players, and vice versa, despite the differences in this case.
Same with MD and TCG/OCG, although the differences in rules here apply more due to the complexity, but even then, I think it's established itself well enough to do some sort of cross promo or something.
I just think the lack of trying from Konami's part is what is the worst about this. They could've pushed it a bit harder than just "here's the game, it exists" and that's it.
It's their strategy of counting on players who get into DL will get into MD and physical games. But that happens much less than they anticipated. That could also very well be one of the reasons why there's less and less players.
MD is in limbo in any case. It's merely a marketing tool for Konami, while it could've been much more in coexistence with the physical game.
The fountain of life